The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I swear, at some point, I will feel 100% here and then I will write you so much about Ghost Trick. SO MUCH.
For now, though, I guess I’ll just dump out all these stupid links I’ve been holding on to because, you know, surely I held onto them for something.

Sharkey wrote another Worst Covers article, a genre of article that never gets old, as I’m sure you’ll find when you read it.
Sharkey is also responsible for this image, I believe.

Be sure to report in.

I mean, it’s no Zombo.com, but Beepdog.us does have dogs AND beeps, so…

This is a map of Diplomacy, because I don’t remember what the spaces are, so I’m leaving this in a tab. It’s not very interesting to you, but, you know, I tend to empty out all my tabs so… here you go!

I still love game music. Here’s two tracks that have been in my head and open in a tab, one from Epic Yarn, and one from Sonic Colors. Completely fucking different, but both amazing.

Well, I have a lot less tabs open now! Onto my next task!

I bought the Carcassonne iPhone app right when it came out. I love the game, and it supposedly had asynchronous multiplayer, something that way, way more iOS games should have. Unfortunately, when I booted it up, I learned that to play online with your friends, you have to use the e-mail account set up on your iDevice. Because having my e-mail on my iPod seemed stupid, I balked at the idea, and I never really got too much use out of it, even though it had hotseat. A few half-started games while waiting for movies to start, perhaps, but that’s about it.

Then, at Jonathan’s birthday party, Spaeth was playing the game. Apparently he got his sister and her husband hooked, and was now playing online matches with them. This made me say, “okay, fine, fuck it.” I hooked up my Gmail, which was as stupid and pain in the ass as I expected. Then I started games with Spaeth, and some people on Talking Time.

I was quickly reminded how fantastic of an implementation of Carcassonne this is. I mean, asynchronous multiplayer does automagically put it above other versions in my book, but it’s not just that. The interface is fucking fantastic. It’s classy and stylized, but at the same time, completely unobtrusive. You never have any problems doing the actions in the game, and all relevant information is instantly available. It does nice little bonuses like showing you positions on the board where it is impossible to put a tile, based on the distribution left in the draw pile. It even has a special little sound for when you get a Push notification of your turn coming up, of a polite gentleman going “It is your turn now.” It’s just a classy app, and Carcassonne is a great game anyway. It really makes me wish that more board games would come out with multiplayer versions like this. Imagine, say, Ticket to Ride played this way! That would be fantastic.

Yeah, keep being awesome, Carcassonne app people. And if you haven’t bought it, do it! It’s excellent.

Teaching an online class has forced me to have to make quizzes.

I’m not one that thinks that a quiz is the best way to judge how much somebody knows. However, I am a person who understands how incredibly stressful and not viable always doing things the right way is. There are plenty of more useful exercises in the class, but I want to give my students a point buffer and make sure they at least skim the textbook at the same time, because there is some stuff in there. Quizzes are the best way to do that in an online format.

Still, since I’m making quizzes, I have to have fun with it. It’s the only way.

Here’s the meta masterpiece of a question I wrote today: “True or False: Describing a complex situation as only having two possible outcomes is an example of an Either/Or Fallacy.”

That one is kind of subtle, but made me grin so hard when I thought of it. Of course, when I make multiple guess questions, there are five boxes for possible answers. You have to have one or two possible answers so that people actually have to know their shit to get the question right, but I mean, there are five boxes. It’s hard not to make one of them something completely ridiculous. Thus I’ve put lots of crazy phrases, quotes from the Big Lebowski, just about anything I can think of as that useless fifth answer.

Making a good quiz is fairly hard, still. In a lot of situations, it’s hard to think of plausible but incorrect options, as well as just figuring out ways to reduce a section of text into a multiple choice question. But at least I’m finding ways to entertain myself. Hopefully my students will at least get a minor chuckle when they finally get around to taking these online quizzes.

At any point I will break. I am at the point where getting new carpeting put in upstairs feels like it will destroy me. I will admit that I really, really hate this feeling, and I hate that I feel this way. I hate that I feel so lost here. I hate it.

I hate it.

I fucking hate it.

It’s not even funny breaking. It’s not useful. It’s not a motivator. I just feel crushed. The thing that crushed me was fucking new carpeting. I feel like such an idiot.

I’m empty and stupid and my life feels like way too much for me. I want to hide in bed until everyone goes away, for at least a few more weeks. Maybe then things will work out, but hey, I’m not holding my breath. Nothing works out.

I’m a functional, fairly hard-working person. Why am I so crushed? Why do I feel like this? I should function. I should work. Things should work out. God fucking dammit.

I’m super late to the party, but I want to write about Desktop Dungeons. Is that okay? Is that cool? Cool.

So, Desktop Dungeons. I gave it a go because of this nice little Let’s Play going on on the Talking Time. It seemed pretty cool, and I mean, the idea is genius. A whole roguelike you can complete in a few minutes is a fantastic concept that I am totally behind. Then again, pretty well any roguelike is one I can play through in a few minutes because I suck and die, but nevermind that.

It was immediately obvious why I had heard so much about the game. It’s really well designed. I feel like it can be even better, and they’re doing some sort of massive overhaul to make it an actual paid product, I believe, which will probably result in that happening, which is cool. I’d pick it up on Steam sometime for a few bucks.

The thing is, though, I feel like it’s really badly suited for Desktops. The interface uses nothing but left clicks. It seems like it would be trivial to put on an iPad, and that’s totally what I want.

Honestly, it’s amazing to me how much iPhone gaming has changed how I look at games. I see little but awesome things like Desktop Dungeons, and I immediately start thinking about how easily they could be converted into the much more convenient iOS platform for consumption. It just seems like such a great place for such development. The people who made the game could have been charging a buck for it on there from the beginning, and maybe would have earned some money for their hard work.
Granted, maybe without the free version it wouldn’t have gotten as much press as it did. That’s certainly something, I suppose. And, of course, it’s always nice to be able to develop in a fully open environment like the PC. I have no argument there. But dammit, it just seems so right. I have indie developers that I love and follow and support on iOS. That’s never really been something I even thought about doing for PC games.

I guess the extrapolation from that is how little I think about the DS and PSP these days. I’m playing Ghost Trick, and I tried to play Birth by Sleep, and it felt weird. I just play more games on my iPod more often. To be honest, an iPad seems like a much better gaming investment, at the moment, than a 3DS, which is certainly something I never expected. (Yes, Essner, I can hear you saying I could buy two 3DSes for the cost of an iPad, I know.) I could easily do that, and wait until the 3DS XL comes out. Or something similar. I mean, hell, Ghost Trick has an iOS version in Japan, which is probably going to show up here in a few months, and frankly, I would probably rather be playing that. I mean, I’d still have bought this DS version even if I had confirmation, because I am impatient, but I wouldn’t doubt that would be a potentially superior version.
Seriously, sometimes I think about how Apple has taken so much of my gaming time, and it still shocks me. Not that I’m unhappy about it. Quite the opposite.

Okay, I guess this wasn’t REALLY about Desktop Dungeons. But that’s a cool game. You could play it. And then maybe ask them to port it to iOS for me. Pretty please?

There was a time when I liked Kingdom Hearts. I remember this being the case. I thought Kingdom Hearts was fucking awesome. I mean, I have a Heartless t-shirt. The second game had a lot of bullshit story elements, but it, too, was awesome once you got out of the Twilight Town and into the game proper. I mean, you got to run around with Tron and shit. It was pretty awesome, right? Right. I certainly remember it as being such.

Therefore, when I heard they were making a Kingdom Hearts on PSP that used the Crisis Core system, a game whose combat I enjoyed, I figured this might be awesome! If it had the same great combat as Crisis Core and all the fanservice, I was sure I could dig it.

Well, it came in from Gamefly, and… I dunno. Have I changed? Or is the game just this bad? I have no idea, but I cannot stand this game.

The game started up with a bunch of Kingdom Hearts pointless story bullshit. It immediately grated on me. On top of that, there was a sequence where Roxas OOPS I MEAN Ventus is shirtless for no fucking reason. Like, seriously, absolutely no reason. It was then that I realized I could skip like a million scenes, and I totally did.
How long would this opening sequence had taken me if I had watched it all? Probably hours.
Eventually I got control of people, and it started flashing all kinds of tutorial information that made no sense because it had no context. Why do I have 3 different sets of abilities? I guess the abilities are like materia? You can level up and combined them and I don’t fucking know. The one thing I did learn, though, is that they loop. So using one readies the next in the list and so on. That’s actually a good idea.
Then it tells me that I can summon other people, but not really, I can just use their skills? Kind of? I have no idea why you would do this besides the fact that it heals you.
Also, after you spam combos, sometimes you transform for no reason for like 10 seconds, only it takes a long time to load.

I then end up at Cinderella castle, which is infested with not-Heartless. I was annoyed that they were there for no reason, but then I realized I skipped any explanation as to why they’d be there, so the game got a pass. In any case, you can’t go three steps without getting into a combat, and the camera controls are so shitty that I often found myself walking backwards after a fight, which meant I had to fight more guys. I basically just started dodging all combats until I got to a point where I had to protect a mouse with a key, which I constantly failed at, and then I stopped.

Was I insane in the past? I remember Kingdom Hearts combat being fun, and the interactions with Disney characters being entertaining, but man, this game is such bullshit. The thing is, it really seems like a good portable adaptation of Kingdom Hearts. It does everything I remember. I just hate it now. Man. I sit here, and I think about KHII, and the fact that I beat it, and I just can’t believe I played a game like that for the hours it would have taken me. I can’t.
Man.

I’ve been working on two games. One is Ghost Trick, a completely fantastic game in its own right and I’m sure to ramble on about forever once I finish it, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Both games are awesome, but currently I’m kind of blown away by both of their soundtracks. So I’m going to share some.

Ace Attorney had some great music in it, that really made the game feel more dramatic than, perhaps, the gameplay actually was. Ghost Trick, while being a better game over all, continues that tradition.

I mean, seriously, just listen to this. When this music kicks in, and the person you’re trying to save is about to die, shit gets REAL. It’s always amazing what they can do with the limited sound hardware of stuff like this. I always have such respect when a song really gets me going when I play a game.

On a different sort of note, though, the music in Epic Yarn just perfectly fits the game. It doesn’t really get you going, but it’s just so cute and so right. I mean, just listen to this. This music is played when you’re on the race car levels. It’s flat-out fantastic. A great piano piece that’s fun and upbeat, but still fitting the cutesy look of the game. It’s simple, but solid. The game is willing to mix it up, too, when the time is right, but in general it keeps it simple, and often goes back to the piano on the very next level. It really helps set the tone for the game just as much as the neat Yarn visuals do.

We live in a time when game music fucking rocks. I love it when a game takes the time to take its music into account when creating. It’s just… effective. It certainly keeps me listening as well.

I am angry at a Kirby game.

My Xbox has died, so I’m turning to other consoles and other amusements. I thought I would finish up Epic Yarn because of that, and sat down for a long play session.

Then I got to King Dedede.

He took me 30 minutes or more to beat, and by the end of it, I was so pissed.
Basically, he would do a couple things you’d have to dodge, then he’d hit the ground with his hammer. You grabbed a star that shot up, hit him with it, then you jumped atop him and used him to let you jump up and grab the Marionette controller controlling him. Pretty simple, right? The marionette would only swoop down for small periods of time, but for the first hit, it was doable.

The third and fourth hits, though, were nearly impossible. It would swoop in from the top of the screen and swoop right back out. It was seriously like half a second. I would jump on Dedede’s back and try to time it, but I kept missing, over and over again. I was screaming at the screen by the end of it. Never had I been so angry at a Kirby game before. Kirby is supposed to be light, stress free, and cute. This was just fucking frustrating.

I didn’t even get the patch to unlock the bonus levels after the fight. I was all pissed. I turned off the game.

Then I go and start ranting about how angry I was to pyro, and decide I’m going to show him a video of how bullshit the boss was. So I pull up this video and…
Shit.
Apparently if you do the weight drop on his back, it pulls down and stuns the marionette.

The problem was that I didn’t need to do that for the first two hits. It was fairly easy to hit. Thus, I never considered I might be doing something wrong, or there might be something else to the boss. Thus, I got caught in this endless loop of anger.
It’s so unlike a Kirby game, though. I really don’t know whose fault this was. I don’t feel like I was particularly dense or did something wrong. There hasn’t been an enemy before that which I HAD to use the drop down move on. I dunno.

I’m sure I’ll calm down and love Kirby once again, and with the actual method of beating him known, getting the patch will be trivial. But man. Anger.
Anger.

Tonight, at Droib’s, we finally managed to try some Goldeneye 007. You know, the new Wii thing.

This game seems like it was created to fill a niche. There are no real hardcore shooters on the Wii. This is because, to be, there’s no real need for one. The people who want those games should have an Xbox, right? But they thought otherwise. Surely there must be people out there with a Wii who would like an online shooter.

Those people will love Goldeneye. Everyone else will kind of wonder why they went to the trouble.

I mean, it’s all solid. We had some fun split-screen multiplayer times, reminiscing about old Goldeneye experiences. It’s a bit slower-paced than most modern shooters, but controls fine. You get to pick loadouts, which have perks that, I assume, you can modify playing the actual online mode. That’s cool. Most of the maps seemed okay? There were fewer remakes of classic maps than I expected. Maybe there are more on the online mode.

The real question was of controls themselves. I had a Classic Controller Pro, which seemed to be the way to go. The controls mapped in a pretty quickly learnable way. However, everyone else was using Gamecube controllers, which presented more of a problem. They mapped Z as a “modifier” key for many buttons on the controller. This works okay, but man, it was nearly impossible to figure out, even looking at the in-game controller diagrams. Once everyone figured that out, though, they could work things fine. It’s just not usual. Then again, the Gamecube controller is really, really weird, so it’s not surprising they had to resort to weird stuff.

We didn’t try Wiimote + Nunchuck because we aren’t stupid. Also we couldn’t find a Nunchuck.

Anyway, it was fun for the hour or two we played it, but I don’t know if we’d ever go back to it again. I certainly wouldn’t without the nostalgia factor. I kind of want to see what the single player is like, but at the same time, it’s not a priority. It seems like a solid product, but it’s not really aimed at me. It’s aimed at people with a Wii and nothing else. I’m sure as hell not that person.

We won our first game of Castle Ravenloft tonight, and I was attempting to think about strategy and what we did better. I’m also wondering if the fact that we only had 3 players made the game easier or not. I’m not sure.
In any case, here’s what lead us to victory, as far as I can see. Let me know if these tips are wrong, in your opinion.

1. Always Keep Moving: Encounters are the things that fuck you over. Monsters are mostly manageable. Thus, you need to do everything in your power to explore every turn. Bringing the Ranger to mop up enemies while still being able to explore with her special power makes this easier.

2. Use a Power Early: There are plenty of cards and effects that can let you restore a utility or daily power, so using one right at the beginning and making sure you keep one face down tends to be more beneficial than trying to save big powers for the end of the session. Fighters, especially, should use Unstoppable the moment they take two damage and try to keep flipping it back over to help their survivability.

3. Only Slightly Be A Team Player: Being close to other heroes gives buffs, but also makes encounters fuck you over that much more. One tile away from your fellow heroes is probably the best range to be, as you can still reach each other, but also aren’t on the same tile for horrible encounter card effects.

4. Rogue Kind Of Sucks: If there’s one class in the game one would want to leave out, I think it would be the Rogue. Many of the Rogue’s abilities are very situational, and are only useful when other heroes are close, which, unlike normal DnD, is fairly rare in good play of this game. Rogue has a distance at-will, sure, but Twin Shot on the Ranger and Magic Missle on the Mage are clearly better. Rogue has some decent up close attacks, but the Fighter’s attacks have way more use and the Ranger’s attacks do more damage. Rogue is really just not specialized and spread too thin. Still, if you have one, be sure to force use of Stealth, because that power is one of the best things the class has going for it.

Those are the lessons I learned, anyway. Hopefully, with these in mind, we can start winning some more games. That’d be cool.